Bright rail future for Hunter train builders

It was delivered with much fanfare to the Port of Newcastle more than a month ago, at a media event attended by the NSW transport Minister David Campbell and the Minister for the Hunter Jodi McKay MP.

Now assembly of the Waratah pre-production test train (PPT), delivered on July 29 to Newcastle by ship from China, is underway at the Cardiff workshops of top 100 Australian company Downer EDI.

Executive manager of the company's Cardiff operations Ivan Waterfield described the development of a PPT as 'a first', as part of the process in delivering a new fleet of 626 passenger trains for the State government by 2013.

"[It is] the first time that has ever happened in New South Wales, and so the importance of this is to try and get it out on the tracks as quickly as we can," he said.

City Rail says network trials of the PPT will begin 'from early 2010' with the data being used to 'tune key systems . . . to support the smooth introduction of Sydney's next generation train fleet'.

Hunter residents will be lucky to see the PPT on the tracks because pre-production tests will take place 'on the City Rail network, primarily at night'.

"[The PPT] will run [for] around for six to nine months on the network, operating and interacting with all of the signals, all of the stations, so that we can test our traction, all of our braking systems [and] all of our electronic interface with all of the network," Mr Waterfield said.

Data collected by onboard computers during the trials will be fed back into the company's control centre and used to fine tune production.

The project, when in full production, will boost the number of workers employed at the Cardiff operation to 300 people, including 30 apprentices.

Manufacturing in the Hunter

Maryanne Graham, group general manager for corporate affairs for Downer Group, said the Waratah project alone would inject 'around $200 million into the local economy'.

This month, to mark the 10th anniversary of the end of steelmaking in the Hunter, ABC Newcastle will be looking at the current state of the manufacturing sector.

In May the CEO of Downer EDI Geoff Knox, at the launch of a $20million upgrade at Cardiff, described Newcastle as 'one of the nation's leading manufacturing centres'.

"This is a unique facility with build and maintenance capacity and it's located on the main line between two of Australia's largest cities," Mr Knox said.

The company employs more than 2000 people in the Hunter region, across divisions such as works, resources, rail, engineering and consulting, with clients as Queensland Rail, and Hunter coal and grain haulers.

Ms Graham said that 'mining in the Hunter is helping to assist the manufacturing sector as well'.

"The growth in iron ore and coal production over the next five years is going to be quite significant," she said.

"Obviously our clients need locomotives and they need to be maintained."

"Likewise the massive investment in infrastructure by State and Federal government means that they're looking to meet the needs of an increasing passenger growth and their train system, so again we're obviously very well placed to continue to do that."

In the context of the recent global financial crisis, Mr Waterfield said the manufacturing sector in the Hunter appeared to be 'very healthy'.

"You can see through a lot of industries - not only from our perspective in rail, but also across all of its divisions - that manufacturing is healthy," he said.

"We seem to have been riding this storm pretty well, so we're all pretty confident of the way forward for manufacturing."

Ivan Waterfield, executive manager Cardiff operations, Downer EDI Rail says 'you can see through a lot of industries - not only from our perspective in rail, but also across all of its divisions - that manufacturing [in the Hunter] is healthy'.
(Anthony Scully - ABC Local)